1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is in the field of network communication, more particularly Internet communication, and pertains particularly to methods and apparatus for automatically increasing search ranking for a community Website to promote growth of the Website.
2. Discussion of the State of the Art
With the advent of the Internet network, community Websites have been developed that persons subscribe to in order to network with others. There are different types of community Websites on the Internet. For the purposes of discussion, a gaming site serves as an example of a community Website whereby users gather online to play online games. Typically community Websites provide chat services, email services, blogs, and other amenities for subscribers to the community.
Websites on the Internet are often found by searching the Internet using a search engine interface provided by a typical search engine company of which there are many known in the art. There are a very large number of Web pages listed in search engine databases of the various search engine companies. These pages are searchable by keyword or phraseology typed into a search engine interface. For commercial sites and sites that need to attract members like community Websites, high ranking in the top search engine databases is critical. Search engine companies rank Web pages based on several criteria that may very slightly from company to company. Among these are keyword relevancy and the number of external links that point to the Web page.
It is desired that a community Website enjoy high search engine ranking in order to promote growth of the Website membership and to increase traffic to advertising at the site, however current means of increasing search engine rankings can be very costly and time consuming.
Therefore, what is clearly needed is a system for increasing search ranking of a community Web site. A system such as this would solve the problems stated above.